


Aesthesia

by Relia



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, M/M, Mild BDSM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:08:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29718339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relia/pseuds/Relia
Summary: “Tread lightly with that one, my darling,” Aphrodite has cautioned him, because nothing is a secret to her keen eye.  “He exists with one foot always outside this world and in another.”
Relationships: Ares/Hypnos (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 146





	Aesthesia

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Восприятие](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29881269) by [WTF Rare Games 2021 (WTFRareGames)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTFRareGames/pseuds/WTF%20Rare%20Games%202021)



> A quick character study.

There’s something in Hypnos’s eyes that reminds Ares of his brother Apollo.

They have almost nothing else in common, of course. Apollo, twit that he can be, cuts an immaculate figure: he is as athletic as he is graceful, face soft and beardless, hair elaborately styled. He keeps the boyishness of youth, but in his mien is the maturity of a well-honed intellect. He likes books, music; he excels at everything he tries. Men adore him, women adore him — Father, of course, adores him. His arrow always finds his mark.

He is counted singular, among the gods: a model for the rest of his siblings to grind their teeth and fail to aspire to. Only Athena really stands much chance there. Hermes, Artemis, and Dionysus don’t care to try, which Ares admits is the better part of wisdom — but though he knows he should join them in quitting that particular field, that he is, in fact, Father’s least favorite get, he can’t seem to match them in their satisfaction with mediocrity. It’s not really in his nature.

He knows Father will never love him as he loves his shining and golden son: that Father will never favor Ares with a doting smile; never ruffle lightning-chafed hands through Ares’ hair, making it stand on end; never boom out a thunderous greeting when Ares comes home from wherever he’s taken himself of an afternoon — yet, still, he tries. His mother has raised him to a certain character of aspiration, and he knows no other way to be.

(He’s a fool, he supposes. But what else is there?)

Apollo, really, bears almost no resemblance to Hypnos, the Chthonic manifestation of human inactivity. But sometimes, Hypnos curls up naked on the couch by Ares’ window, rubbing sensation back into bruised wrists, and the strange, unseeing look in his eyes is more like Apollo’s than anything else Ares could compare it to. There’s something in his gaze beyond mortal or divine understanding.

“Tread lightly with that one, my darling,” Aphrodite has cautioned him, because nothing is a secret to her keen eye. “He exists with one foot always outside this world and in another.”

She’s right. She’s always right. Behind Hypnos’s face-splitting smiles and too-quick reassurances, Ares starts to be able to see the truth: there will never be a moment where the god of slumber is fully here, and here alone. His vibrant color shines half into this realm and half into a place where only he dwells. A place he’s tethered to, and can’t escape. He means no offense by it.

Still, to watch him fight for wakefulness is a sublime thing, in its way. He clings to it by his fingernails, dug into Ares’ shoulders and begging, “ _please, please, please_ ,” until Ares obliges him with teeth buried in his shoulder, or nails scraping hard over dusky nipples, or a hand in the back of his hair, slamming his head down into the pillow with enough force to command his attention.

Hypnos gasps out, “ _thank you_ ,” and what Ares understands is this: pain doesn’t just stir him towards pleasure, which would be reason enough. It anchors him, too, giving him something that draws a sharp line between his liminal real and unreal. It’s a beacon to light his way when he starts to drift off in spite of himself.

Ares catches him sometimes in the aftermath, pressing his fingers into old, fading bruises, trying to stay present a little longer. Hypnos will do anything to lie about it — to convince anyone that he could change, that he could be awake all the time if he wanted to. That he could be more like the rest of them.

Ares, though, spent years at his mother’s knee, learning diction and elocution, manners and posture. Anything that would put a golden polish on his violence and wildness. Anything that would convince anyone he was fit for polite company. Anything that would give his father some reason, any reason, to love him.

He’s done everything, just for the chance to be least loved out of all Zeus’s children. Just to be on the list at all.

When Hypnos is tired, Ares lets him be tired. He draws Hypnos away from worrying at old injuries, presses light lips against each echo of a bruise, and says:

“ _Rest._ ”


End file.
